Write about the symbols of the play The Hairy Ape

The thinker, ape and steel are the major symbols of this play. Thinking is a favourite work of Yank. Now and then he tells his fellowmen to let him think. He says, “Lemmetink”. We the readers are introduced to this statue of Rodin several times when Yank needs to think. Yank’s impression of Rodin’s statue, “The Thinker” is symbolic of Yank’s need to think. While he physically embodies the cultural symbol of a “thinker” he cannot think himself. Every time O’Neill’s stage direction calls for the actor to take the position of “The Thinker” Yank has come up against an obstacle that cannot be tackled by any other means but thought—when Yank cannot process the realities before him. After Yank is thrown out of the I.W.W he immediately gets into “The Thinker” pose. 

He is desperate to make sense of his situation and understand why the union would throw him out. Yank’s inability to think not only reveals his regression to a lower animal form, but also renders him unable to adapt to or defend himself in the world beyond the ship. 

The real ape in Scene Eight is the only other character that takes “The Thinker” position. The ape sharing this habitual body position reflects on Yank’s own animalistic state—his mode of thought is no more advanced than the ape’s. 

Apes are everywhere in The Hairy Ape: Yank is called an ape, Yank thinks he is an ape, Mildred thinks she sees an ape, Yank tells people he is an ape, Senator Queen writes that the Wobblies wil degenerate American civilization “back to the ape” and, most importantly, there is a real live ape in Scene 8. The ape symbolizes man in a primitive state before technology, complex language structures, complex thought or money was necessary. The ape represents man that is not only behind in an evolutionary sense, but is free of class, technology and other elements of modern society. The ape is only concerned with survival. 

Steel is both a symbol of power and oppression in The Hairy Ape. While Yank exclaims in Scene One that he is steel, “the muscles and the punch behind it,” he is all the while penned in a virtual cage of steel created by the ship around him. Steel creates other cages in the play~Yank’s jail cell and the cell of the Ape. Steel is also oppressive because it creates jobs like Yank’s, it is symbolic of the technology that force Yank and the Firemen into slave-like jobs. We see Yank at the beginning of the play as an ugly, almost simian figure, the leader of all the firemen on board an unnamed steamship. He glories in his strength and identifies himself with the machinery he serves. He perceives himself as the prime mover of all machinery, the maker of steel. He “belongs,” a favourite word with him. He has found a place for himself, one which satisfied him, in the inferno of the stokehole. This dream is shattered when Mildred Douglas, a jaded young society woman, visits the stokehole in search of a new experience and sees Yank. Steel betrays him, so he starts his search for his identity.